Lose the Shoes

I am just so much more aware of my feet when I'm here at the cottage. It's the first thing I do - take off my shoes. And while certain activities like going into town, and blueberry picking might require appropriate footwear, for the most part I like to be barefoot as much as I possibly can.

Let me dangle them in the water at the end of the dock. Let me stand on the rock at the end of the day and sole-soak, soul-soak the radiant heat from the day. Let me poke them out from the covers on a hot night and feel the breeze from the water wash them cool.

Not surprisingly, I take better care of my feet when I'm here. Partly because they're far more visible and therefore in need of some help to be presentable. And partly because while I'm here..... I can. Just soak and buff and rub my feet with coconut buttery goodness, out on the deck, music playing, sun shining, curious chipmunks coming by to look up at me with questioning faces, and peer inside my pail to see what's going on.

It's the luxury of taking care of two parts of me that carry the full weight of responsibility in transporting the rest of my body around all the rest of the year. It's the gift of having that little bit of time to just look after me.

But mostly it just feels good to lose the shoes. Maybe because, for me, this is holy ground.

It was God's instruction to Moses. It's a practice still followed my Muslims before entering a mosque. There's a symbolism in the removing of shoes in order to prepare to meet with God.

And that's so very true for me here too. This is a Meeting Place of Holy Things for me. Quiet hushes of His whispers to my neediness. Comfort for the wounds sustained. Gentle rebuke for what needs course correction. Joy and delight in just sharing this time together.

So maybe, in defernce, in hopefness, I lose the shoes. And in gratitude receive the water, wind and rock with reverence, and gladness, and an anticipation of the Holy.
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Like I Never Left

This year my return to the water seems hardly a return at all.

To be sure, there were 11 abundant months in between. Months of ministry and family and growing and full engagement in the wild adventure that is my great gift to call living.
This past year, as I Waited and Listened (as instructed last summer on the dock), I saw God do His thing in some pretty spectacular, quietly astonishing ways. Relationships shifted, loves grew deeper, connections ran stronger, celebrations rang happier. (A hands-down highlight was being asked to baptize five new believers at Hot Springs when our Team was there last March.)

My outside speaking engagements brought serendipitous surprises as I came with my little bag lunch of loaves and fishes and then stood back and watched with amazement as God fed healing and encouragement to the masses. My own healing was part of His agenda those times too.

Highview, my blessed place of serving and being served, has grown in her hunger for prayer, her longing for deep teachings from God's Word, and her passion to be the hands and feet of Jesus in honest and livable ways. Fifteen among us made the decision to call Jesus Lord. Oh!

So, the between-time was decidedly big and memorable and breath-snatching.

And yet.

I come to the dock now, to begin a generous six week stay, and -- it feels like I never left.

Maybe it's because I'm not exhausted. Usually I am. Usually I get here barely coherent, running on fumes (that stink) and ready for nothing more than sleep alternating with glazed-over stares across the water. Usually it takes me a solid week or more, sometimes a lot more, just to "climb back up to zero" as on of my Elders describes it.

Not this year. This year it feels like God and I are picking up where we left off last summer. I am alive and alert and deeply engaged right from the get go. Ken has noticed (and appreciated) the difference. So have I.

I am grateful for those who continue to speak encouragement into my soul all year long, my confidants, my counsellors, my mentors. Thank you for sharing your spiritual energies with me always, but particularly this year.

I deeply love and appreciate the committed and hard working Staff at Highview, who have shared the burden with me this year in new and obviously healthy (for me at least) ways.

And I am full of awe, and vibrantly aware of my deep and refreshing God, who's been both with me every moment of this past year, AND waiting with eager anticipation to meet me here again, on the dock, where it feels like I've never left.
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Jubilee Letter to My Mom

Since my youth, O God,

You have taught me,

And to this day I declare

Your marvellous deeds.

Even when I am old and gray,

Do not forsake me, O God,

Until I declare Your power

To the next generation,

Your might to all who are to come.

Psalm 71:17-18

June 8, 2012

Dear Mom,

This is a significant birthday for me – age 55.  It’s not just the years of my life, but the years of my spiritual life.  I was 5 when I accepted Jesus as my Saviour and Lord.  That means all this year I am celebrating 50 years with Jesus!  In the Old Testament, that’s called the Year of Jubilee.  It was a time of remembering that everything and everyone belongs to God; a time of freedom and rest and redemption.

In the months leading up to today, and even now, I am reading and praying and considering exactly how I want to mark this year with God.  I think it will involve some beautiful experiences with Him over the next 12 months. 

 

But I wanted to begin by saying thank you to you, my Mother, for nurturing me inside of you, for giving birth to me, and for all the investment, physical, emotional and spiritual, you poured into me. 

Most of all, thank you for laying out a spiritual pathway for me to find intimacy with God through Jesus Christ.  Thank you for believing in me and supporting me all through my life.  I am convinced that your faithful prayers for me and my family and the ministry God has entrusted to me, have blessed and carried and strengthened me far more than I can truly know.

Psalm 71:17-18 has become my ‘theme verse’ for this Jubilee year.  While it is my own earnest prayer before God, it also reminds me of you.  You have declared God’s power and might to me, to my children, and now to my grandchildren, just by living so faithfully for Him.

I am deeply, deeply grateful.

Your daughter,

Ruth Anne

Jubilee

"Consecrate the fiftieth year 

and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants.  

It shall be a jubilee to you."  

Leviticus 25:10

I'm having a significant birthday come Friday.  

It's not the year exactly, that makes this birthday stand out for me.  I'm turning 55 - -  which by the way, just by itself I think is kind of cool.  But it's the spiritual marking of it that's been making me want to approach this birthday, and this entire year, in a set-aside, consecrated kind of way.

This year will mark 50 years of following Jesus.  I was 5 when I made my first profession of faith.  And even though I believe it was just the beginning of an understanding of what it means to seek redemption and forgiveness, and come into a personal, intimate relationship with God through Christ, it is in my mind the beginning of what I know to be my spiritual journey.

So, 50 years.  According to Levitical Law, this is my spiritual "jubilee".

God's instructions to Moses and His newly liberated people, standing at the base of Mt Siani concerning the Year of Jubilee, were all about letting the land rest, restoring dignity to the oppressed and poor, and being reminded in concrete ways that we are utterly dependent on a full-of-grace God for everything we have.  It was  meant to be a kind of gigantic 're-set' button on the nation, where everything was set back to the way it was supposed to be.

Inspired by that fact, and also I'm sure by the fabulous celebrations around Queen Elizabeth's diamond jubilee, I've decided that I want to find ways to spiritually celebrate somehow.

I don't have it all figured out yet.  But I do know would like to take the whole year and mark it in significant ways.

I've chosen my Jubilee verse:

Psalm 71:17-18

Since my youth, O God, you have taught me,

and to this day I declare your marvelous deeds.

Even when I am old and gray,

do not forsake me, O God,

till I declare your power 

to the next generation,

your might to all who are to come.

Lots to keep me meditating on with that one for a while, the ponderings of which I will save for future Jubilee blogs :).

I'm looking forward to marking things with Highview's stellar Staff Team --  a little more than normal special lunch time this coming Friday, since our weekly meal together actually falls on my birthday.

And I've arranged for a special cake - yes, I do love cake! - to share with my family that evening.

And the day before I've asked for time with a trusted friend and counselor who's been a spiritual mentor to me through so much over a significant part of my adult life.  We will pray together and mark the beginning of the Year of Jubilee of my soul.

As for the rest of it?  I will soon be away for my annual summer Sabbath at the cottage where I will spend more time reading and journaling and pondering on this, finding more ways, I anticipate, to declare God's marvelous deeds, His power and might, to the next generation, and to proclaim liberty, whatever all of that looks like.  As I said, I don't have it all figured out yet.  Some of it will be out there, with family and friends and blogs.  But most of it, I'm thinking, might be quiet and hushed and holy, and really private.

It sounds simple to say it, but it's really, really deep in there.  I love Jesus.  He has been my best and most faithful friend, my Messiah, my source of peace and strength, my everything.....for just my whole life long.  And I want to celebrate Him, honour Him, declare Him, worship Him.

Because my soul is excruciatingly grateful in the deepest  most private places that I call me. 

Open Letter to Highview Community Church on our 15th Anniversary

June 3, 2012 

Dear Beautiful Friends,

This morning we marked 15 years together as a church.   Hardly seems possible, but by God's grace, here we are.  And I know I said it this morning, but I want to be sure to say it again.

I love you.

I love serving with you, doing life with you, reaching out to regions beyond with you, worshiping with you, and having you to walk with during the joys and agonies.  I love your creativity and tenacity and honesty.  I love your loyalty, to me, to one another and to God.

I love the joy, the depth, the generosity and integrity of your spirit.  I love watching you share your faith with gentleness and respect.  I love watching you love each other.  I love watching you grow more and more deeply in love with Jesus.  I am astonished by how I am known and loved by you.

It truly has been a privilege to have been in this with you for the entire 15 year run, not all of those as your pastor, but all of them as your friend. 


Highview's growing up.  For all of our beginnings and boldness, successes and blunders, there's a new and humble movement toward greater maturity and depth among us now.  There's a sense that we're coming into a season of deeper roots and stronger foundations, foundations laid with the faithful, sacrificial service of every single person who has called Highview home.

Today, with a young sugar maple sapling and bright ribbons, we marked 14 decisions for Christ in this season alone.  "For our inheritance, give us the lost" we sing, and God has been so generous!  I can't wait to see how big that little tree will have grown in the next 15 years!  I can't wait to see what God will do with a church on the roundabout at the bottom end of Kitchener, excited and strong and fully surrendered to Him.

Happy Birthday Highview!

Profoundly grateful,

Ruth Anne